Erasmo Ramirez

The sixth inning of every home Clayton Kershaw start isn’t going to be the same. No longer will Angelenos be filing in as if it’s the first, suddenly realizing that Kershaw is pitching, but now they will be stuck talking about everything but baseball for the entirety of the game and not simply 95% of it. “Ma, can I keep score on the back of my headshot?” “We’re not here to see the game, Timmy, we’re here to run into commercial directors. This is where Stew’s mom got him that Tropicana commercial. You want to pay my bills, don’t you?” “Sorry, ma.” Like the oral sex scene in The World According to Garp, it’s a devastating blow losing Kershaw for any amount of time. He was diagnosed with a herniated disc, but won’t require surgery. The Dodgers are hoping he’s back (poor choice of words) from the DL right after the All-Star Game. I’d pray with you, but I’m using my hands to clap for not drafting a pitcher in the 1st round. The Dodgers did pick up Bud Norris in a trade to fill in. Won’t see any fall off there! Anyway, here’s what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball:

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called a fantasy baseball season. I was dreamin’ when I wrote this, forgive me if I recommend starting a hitter vs. Jake Arrieta and pray. I’m not a woman, I’m not a man, I am Bartolo Colon and you will never understand how I get on these pants. 1, 2, 1, 2, 3. Yeah. I was working part-time in a five-and-dime, my boss was Willie McGee. U got the look. Jesus, McGee, that look. Twenty-three positions in a one night stand. Twenty-three positions in a very deep league fantasy team. Who’s my short-second-short-1st baseman? Why do we scream at each other? This is what it sounds like when David Price’s owners cry. “Sorry to hear about Chyna,” said the ghost of Farrah Fawcett. Arrieta, you got the batter’s fly balls all tied up! Don’t make the outfielders chase you! Even doves have pride. Why do we scream at each other when we don’t own Jake Arrieta? So, Arrieta threw a no-hitter yesterday — 9 IP, 0 ER, 4 BBs, 6 Ks. Rather economical pitch count too (119). Member when we were able to own him last year by drafting him in the 8th round? Alas, he’s a Sexy M.F. and I would die 4 U. Anyway, here’s what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball:

As George Bush Jr. once said, “Fool me once, shame on you, you can’t fool me again because we won’t get fooled again,” then he was joined by Pete Townshend in a duet that made sense at the time, but now seems inconceivable. GB was right on, and that’s how I initially felt about Matt Moore. How many times could we be fooled by this guy? What’s that? Twelve? I was asking that rhetorically, I didn’t want a number. Why did you just say thirteen? I don’t want a number! Whether it is twelve, thirteen or one time fooled, it doesn’t *pinkie to mouth* Matt-er. Yesterday, Moore went 6 1/3 IP, 2 ER, 5 baserunners with 10 Ks. He now has a 10.3 K/9 and a 1.5 BB/9. That walk rate, I mean muah. That with a 8 K/9 would have me interested. With a 10+ K/9? Yes, please and thank you, to get politely excited. On a related note, not sure how this happened, but I have an abundance of AL East pitchers in different leagues. Great, terrific, adjective, except when they face New York, Boston and Toronto, which is basically every game. FMFBBL! Anyway, here’s what else I saw this weekend in fantasy baseball:

There was a time the Wayans brothers were funny and I mean that funny ‘haha’ way. Not the how sad and disconnected can you be way. I grew up watching Living Color and loved how it was counter culture at the time. My friends were watching Family Matters, I was watching Homey D. Clown telling everyone about the man and how he was bringing him down. I bring all this fluff to you because in his heyday, Damon Wayans Sr – which I have to put because his son is more famous now – was quite the draw. So much so, we got subjected to multiple movies featuring him. One such bad 90’s nostalgia flashback was Mo’ Money. This was a scene in that movie. I’m sorry you watched it but now you know how I feel. But for fun, let’s pretend the movie had a real plot and play on the concept of people trying to get money for nothing over and over and that’s where Erasmo Ramirez comes in. At $6,600, there’ll be plenty of fake dollars left over for your main arm and some hefty bats. I’d most likely avoid in cash simply because I’m not sure how stretched out he is and how long he gets to go, but I’m of the mindset he’ll go five minimum with a good chance for six. I’m not expecting big numbers but if he can log me 20, I’ll go home happy at this price. Hell, I’m already home so I’ll just stay here happy. Happy that I’m never watching Mo’ Money again…and with that, let’s move along. Here’s my Fire Marshall Bill hot taeks for this Saturday DK slate…

The late rounds of most fantasy baseball drafts are typically filled with mediocre veterans and low percentage lottery tickets. “Maybe Jered Weaver has another sub-4.5 ERA season left in his arm. Is Max Kepler likely to be called up before the all-star break?” That’s you weighing your options in the last round of your draft. Pretty uninspiring, aren’t they? There is another group of players that is more likely to have an immediate impact on your fake team during the upcoming season – the post-hype players. These are the guys who showed promise at one point in their careers but lost some their shine due to underperformance or durability issues. Erasmo Ramirez is the type of player who falls into this group.

When trying to identify potentially undervalued starting pitchers, there are a few key things that I always look for. Notice that I specified undervalued players, since the hard-throwing, high strikeout artists (Syndergaard, Harvey, Sale, Strasburg, etc.) and the young “sleeper” types who are generally perceived to have high ceilings (Walker, McCullers, Rodon, Iglesias, etc.) don’t necessarily fit that description. So if velocity and K-rate are de-prioritized, what’s left to focus on?

There are a few other traits/skills that are worth emphasizing as far as starting pitchers are concerned. These include the abilities to:

Howdy Razzballero! Razzballians? Did we ever come to a consensus on a term to identify the loyal followers of this great site? *checks glossary* Hmmm… don’t see one. I do see the term DLzebub though. That one isn’t used nearly enough. He pays me a visit at least a half a dozen times each season. I hate that guy! But it’s a great term and it probably should be used more often, just hopefully not when analyzing the roster that I recently assembled in an industry mock draft that took place on Wed., Feb. 3rd at Couchmanagers.com (smooth transition, eh?).

The format that was used for this draft was a standard 15 team NFBC format, with no bench spots being the only major difference. The starting positions used were 2 catchers, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, 5 outfielders, CI, MI, Util, and 9 pitchers (any combination of starters and relievers). You can check out the results of the entire draft here.

With the top 80 starters for 2016 fantasy baseball, we are so close to the end of the rankings I can almost taste it! Wait, that’s not rankings I taste, I bit my lip and it’s blood. I wonder if when Dracula bites his lip it’s like when Cougs goes out with her friends and I’m left at home while Emmanuelle is on Cinemax. You might say to yourself, “Self, everyone is totally fooled by my toupee and do I really need to draft starters this deep in my friendly 12-team mixed league?” You don’t, except you will own guys from this post this year either from the draft or from waivers or your leaguemates will own them and beat you. Last year, in the tier of pitchers I liked in the top 80 starters was Wacha, Carlos Martinez and Heaney. They had an ERA of 3.26 in 467 IP. You put three guys like that together with, say, Kluber and Rodon and you have all the pitching you need. Or team three starters like that with Hamels and Corbin or Ventura and Lester. I’ll go over exactly how to draft starters in a few days, but there are so many ways to skin a cat we should have PETA breathing down our necks. All the 2016 fantasy baseball rankings are there. My tiers and projections are noted. Anyway, here’s the top 80 starters for 2016 fantasy baseball:

We have one reader in Nigeria who emails me privately about how I’ve won large amounts of muney (sic), so I don’t need to be working, which means this is more of a PSA, and should be taken even more seriously: Starling Marte is a God. There’s Jesus, there’s his Dad, there’s Jehovah, there’s Mormons’ magic underpants, there’s whoever the Jews pray to — Mel Brooks? — there’s Chief Jay Strongbow, there’s the Pope, there’s Allah, there’s Halla, the Arab God for dyslexics, and there’s others, I’m sure. My God is Starling Marte. You know how the religious say, “Peace be with you?” For baseball players, they should say, “May you always hit in Coors.” Yesterday in Coors, Marte went 4-for-5, 1 run, 1 RBI, which is the rainbow jimmies on the ice cream that has been his season. He has 18 HRs, 29 SBs and is hitting .288. Right now, he’s around top 25 on our Player Rater. For 2016, it’s gonna be hard for me to wait past the top 20 overall. Yes, he’s that good, and I may just rank him above McCutchen. Oh, snap! Don’t need the police to try to save them, your voice will seize, so please, stay off my back or I will attack and you don’t want that. Hit the bass, hit the anyway and let’s do this! Anyway, here’s what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball:

Yesterday, I was watching the Twins game and I fell asleep and had a dream that Razzball’s Twitter account got one of those blue check marks. I’m not sure what this says about my fantasies, but it says something about Tyler Duffey and the Twins. They lack a certain je ne sais Michelle Kwan. The Twins seem to do this on purpose. Very workmanlike. Like a Minnesota woman who would handily beat me in an arm wrestling match. Pun noted. I’ve never been to Minnesota, but I picture the women looking like Jesse Ventura when he used to wear feathers in his hair and leotards. As with just about every Twins pitcher since Radke, minus Liriano and Johan, Duffey is yet another Twins hurler that has solid control and okay, not great strikeouts. Yesterday, he went 6 1/3 IP, 1 ER, 9 baserunners, 7 Ks vs. the Tigers, and had a 2.53 ERA in Triple-A with a 7 K/9. I don’t see any huge upside here and is better in real life, which apparently the Twins play in. The Stream-o-Nator hates his next start, but I would start him if I needed to gamble. Anyway, here’s what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball:

With my oldest starting kindergarten last week, I was reminded of my days in grade school and the things I looked forward to the most. The first was the recess basketball game. Your level of happiness for the rest of the day depended upon which side of the ball you were on from Bennett School Playground legend Rufus Frazier. This kid could ball, he had the crazy hook shot that was impossible for the other kids to defend. He had the wicked first step and was one of like five kids that didn’t travel once every four dribbles. The second was cafeteria pizza on Friday’s, if you were lucky you got the french bread ones with the extra cheese. But you didn’t complain if you got the Elio’s because it was still better than anything your Mom gave you all week. Amirite? But the thing I looked forward to the most was the daily snack time around 10 o’clock. The quality of your snacks was a direct correlation to how much your parents loved you. Lucky for me my Mom was killing the snack game way back in 88′ and kept it real proper. So for this week’s edition of my never-ending quest to connect my childhood nostalgia with two start pitchers we’re going to be discussing snack foods of the late 80’s and early 90’s. Some of these staples of my childhood are still in stores, while others have gone the way of Kato Kaelin. Wait he’s still around? Ayo, it’s two start pitchers, Week 24….